To successfully upgrade VMware Cloud Director Availability, first do all prerequisites steps then upgrade each appliance according to a specific order.

After taking both backups and snapshots of all appliances, upgrade the sites running VMware Cloud Director Availability in the following order:
  1. In the local cloud site, upgrade all the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances.
  2. In remote paired sites, upgrade all the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances.
    Note: Paired sites interoperability allows for two earlier versions compatibility. Features introduced in later versions cannot interoperate with earlier versions. For more information, see Paired sites versions interoperability.
  3. Upgrade all the on-premises appliances. For information about upgrading on-premises, see Upgrading the on-premises site.
In a VMware Cloud Director Availability cloud site, upgrade all the appliances according to the following procedure:

Prerequisites

Important: Verify that before starting the upgrade:
  • Verify that the backups of all the appliances in the site are recent. For more information, see Backing up and restoring in the Cloud Director site.
  • Verify that current snapshots of all the appliances exist in the site.

    Take snapshots either with all the VMware Cloud Director Availability services stopped or with the appliances powered off.

  • Verify that the sites are prepared for replication interruptions and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) violations.

Procedure

  1. Power off the Tunnel Appliance and all Replicator Appliance instances running in the local cloud site.
    Note: Either now power them off when not planning to use the management interface for the upgrade, or alternatively you must power them off after starting the upgrade of the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance during the Upgrade wizard, once the Compatibility Check page successfully passes all the checks for the paired sites. When these appliances are powered off before these checks pass, the Compatibility Check page shows a warning: On Premises Replicators are going to become incompatible with this site after upgrade. Also, on the same page the following expected error message shows for each paired site:

    Generic Network Error occurred on client side.

  2. Upgrade the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance and after a successful upgrade, power off the appliance.

    If the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance upgrade fails, revert to the latest snapshot.

  3. Power on a single Replicator Appliance instance.
    1. Upgrade the Replicator Appliance instance.
    2. After a successful upgrade, power off the upgraded Replicator Appliance instance.

      If the upgrade of a Replicator Appliance instance fails, revert to the latest snapshot.

    3. Repeat this step for all the remaining Replicator Appliance instances in the local cloud site.
  4. Power on the Tunnel Appliance.
    1. Upgrade the Tunnel Appliance.
    2. After a successful upgrade, power on the upgraded Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance and all the upgraded Replicator Appliance instances.

      If the Tunnel Appliance upgrade fails, revert to the latest snapshot.

    All the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances in the local cloud site are upgraded and powered on.
  5. Delete all snapshots.
    Note: Any other snapshot operation except the ones described in the first prerequisite and in steps: 2, 3b, 4b, and 5 is not supported and can potentially break VMware Cloud Director Availability.

Results

VMware Cloud Director Availability in the local cloud site is successfully upgraded.

What to do next

After upgrading the local cloud site, the remote cloud sites, and upgrading the on-premises appliances, you can start using the new features of the upgraded VMware Cloud Director Availability version.